Anna Delvey. “Delusions of Grandeur” (2022). Corrections facility pen and pencil on smuggled watercolor paper. 9” x 12”.

There’s no shortage of tales about new york city, its artists as storied as the narratives imbued in their artworks. Anna Delvey is as storied an NYC figure as any, her notoriety and media distaste stemming not from her newly in-the-making contemporary art career, but rather her con-artistry—an (albeit crafty) history of scamming the city’s elite, its big banks, its exclusive spheres of art, fashion, and fabulosity—escapades of which everyone has an opinion.

We’ve read the articles, we’ve watched the show (Netflix’s Inventing Anna), and we’ve trawled through Delvey’s Instagram, back to the days of dreamy landscapes and artworks and screengrabs of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Perhaps we’ve read a certain tell-all book, authored by a certain former friend. We have pieced together a palimpsest of the woman herself—each interpretation slightly varying—but informed nonetheless by the abundant information online, in the news, within court documents. Now, Russian-born and Germany-raised Delvey is reclaiming her narrative, and she’s doing so through the avenue of art. Despite her name popping up in the headlines every few weeks (out of hate, jealousy, awe, fear?), Delvey is, in fact, ‘Reinventing Anna.’

Of course, reinvention has to look backwards in order to pilot the unknown ahead. Throughout the mid-Twenty-Tens, Delvey was a mainstay on the New York social scene, frequenting parties and lavish Downtown dinners. Notorious for tipping in $100 bills, her peers presumed her a wealthy German heiress—a status Delvey maintains she never outright claimed—and thus thought little of loaning her money which, it turns out, they’d never see again. In 2016, she pushed the Anna Delvey Foundation (ADF), an art-centered members club for which she nearly secured a 22-million-dollar loan. In February 2017, Delvey checked into 11 Howard—a now infamous stay for which payment was continuously delayed, the invoice’s wire (supposedly, according to Delvey) in transit, until CitiBank, finally sent the $30k Delvey owed.

Anna Delvey. “Corrections Collec- Tion” (2022). Corrections Facility Pen And Pencil On Smuggled Watercolor Paper. 9” X 12”.
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Delvey’s early escapades were heavily documented on Instagram—the dinners, the parties, the art shows, the travel. It was, after all, the height of the app’s popularity, back when Instagram filters were the norm and white borders were (albeit briefly) en vogue. One’s social scene—where, and with whom, one spent their time—was amplified in this nascent online portal, a phenomenon only intensified and diversified today. Perhaps this, in part, more deeply fed Delvey’s exploits—this relatable need to be seen as successful, busy, and popular. To be desired, by virtue of being seen. But Delvey wasn’t and isn’t alone in this, this wide-reaching obsession with the app, an inherent fetishization of certain ‘friends’ within one’s sphere, that no doubt drove— and continues to foster—the public’s infatuation with the... fake heiress? Performance artist? Cellmate?

At the time, Delvey’s posts gave gravitas to her claims to riches, not just reflecting, but augmenting, her story. Now, she’s posting from prison (or rather, her team is), amplifying her media coverage and promoting her new artwork, tactfully capitalizing on, while attempting to distance itself from, the public’s infatuation with the crimes that made her famous and that those at the receiving end of can’t seem to let go. In prison, distractions, such as Instagram, are few and far between, Delvey shares. She has a tablet on which she can message and keep up with the news, but social media sites are beyond reach. So, too, are instruments of creativity. “I actually find constraint to be helpful,” Delvey reflects, “because you have less choice and less tools, so you’re not confused by all the choices, like when you’re free. You can’t get anything.” Delvey, as we’ll learn, has a lot on the go, and credits this to having nothing but time. “You’d be surprised,” she continues, with a mix of sarcasm and earnestness characteristic of the larger conversation, “if you don’t have social media and you don’t have to go out for lunches and dinners—that’s magic for your schedule.”

Anna Delvey. “The Delvey Crimes Company” (2022). Corrections Facility Pen And Pencil On Smuggled Watercolor Paper. 9” X 12”.

The schedule, pre-incarceration, was a different kind of magical. There were yachts, art fares, couture weeks, and nonstop dining do’s, each requiring a fashion statement that kept fresh, but didn’t cow-tow to fickle, new money trends. In May 2017, Delvey went to Morocco (the climactic trip in the aforementioned Netflix series), where, unable to pay the hotel, her friend at the time, Rachel DeLoache Williams, was left to foot the approximately $62,000 bill. Upon averting another handful of hotel charges back in New York, Delvey jetted to Los Angeles, where she was arrested in Malibu in October 2017. She was thereafter convicted of charges, including grand larceny and theft of services, and spent time in Rikers and Albion Correctional Facility. Delvey was released from the latter in February last year. Just one month later, she was taken into ICE custody for overstaying her visa and has been in Orange County Jail, New York ever since.

Inside, and left to her own devices (pen and paper), Delvey tapped into her “little bit of background in drawing”—in another era, according to the pile of media leading up to her arrest, she allegedly studied fashion illustration at Parsons Paris—to begin the retelling of her storied life thus far. Not that this was the initial intention; while on trial, sketching was a welcome time-killer. “When you sit in court all day,” Delvey explains, “people don’t realize there are so many stretches of time where there’s nothing going on and you just wait.”

The works are darkly humorous, poking fun at the system that’s landed her behind bars once again. “Maybe it’s my way of dealing with things,” she shrugs (or, rather, says in a tone that sounds accompanied by a shrug). “It’s obviously a fine line,” she cautions, considering the potential for her work to offend. But given that her primary focus is herself, she feels that makes the cheek acceptable.

When asked, Delvey can’t initially choose one favorite sketch. “I obviously like them all, because I included them in the show,” she quips matter-of-factly. But she does single out “Vanilla ICE,” noteworthy for its timeliness. “I came up with it really randomly,” she explains. “It was not supposed to be in the collection, but it sums up what I’m going through right now very accurately. It’s just so very of the moment.”

Anna Delvey. “Retired Intern” (2022). Corrections Facility Pen And Pencil On Smuggled Watercolor Paper. 9” X 12”.

Similarly ‘of the moment’ was Delvey’s recent art exhibition, Allegedly, held at Public Hotel in the Lower East Side, New York—Delvey’s old Downtown stomping ground. A performance in and of itself, the show involved sunglass-clad models in all black, traipsing through Public’s dimly-lit halls, carrying Delvey’s artwork to the tune of Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights.” According to Delvey, the exhibition went exactly as she planned. It generated a buzz, drew a huge crowd, and earned an abundance of media attention. “I Went to Anna Delvey’s Stupid Art Show (Esquire),” “I Have Seen the Death of Culture (Rolling Stone),” and “Anna Delvey’s Solo Show Seemed Like Another Scam (Artnet)” read headlines following the show. Though it’s challenging for her to gauge the social media response, Delvey’s seen the articles—all of which acknowledge the night’s notoriety, regardless of whether or not they praise the work or its performative approach.

The response to the response solidifies something observed, or at least exuded by, Delvey throughout the conversation—she is at a point where she’s unfazed by such ambivalence. “I’m in here, and it’s kind of easier to care less about what people say,” she reflects. “It doesn’t really affect me in any way, because it doesn’t matter what anybody says—my day-to-day life will remain the same.” She credits this attitude to an adjustment made over time. “It was definitely a lesson,” she reflects. “It’s been a couple years now since I’ve been covered by the media, so I definitely have a different attitude than I’d had in the past. It just bothers me way less. It feels healthier.”

At present, ‘healthy’ seems a priority for Delvey, and a big part of that is rethinking ideas of space, despite the limits of space around her. Before creating artworks and hosting exhibitions, she hoped to create the aforementioned ADF, housed in 281 Park Avenue South (the building of which, in a touch of irony, is now home to Fotografiska New York, “neither a traditional museum nor gallery,” according to its site). The site is now back on the market, but its development is not one that would be of interest to Delvey. “I feel like the world changed so much after Covid, and everything is digital,” she says of a growing disinterest in physical spaces. She continues, “I’m just not interested in the idea of a private art club [anymore]. I grew out of that.”

Anna Delvey. “Postcards From The Edge” (2022). Corrections Facility Pen And Pencil On Smuggled Watercolor Paper. 9” X 12”.

Growth is indeed marked by many events and influences, but anyone would argue a critical tenet of its necessary fulfillment is community. Delvey plans to nurture this necessity by establishing a network via the Blockchain. Delvey has launched ‘Reinventing Anna’ NFTs, another step towards sharing her story, her way. And there’s rewards for coming aboard ship. She’s held Discord sessions (announced on her Instagram) for token holders, and select NFT holders can expect either a phone call or an in-person meeting with Delvey herself. Multi-token holders will receive custom sketches, and there are more drops in the pipeline.

In effect, Delvey’s selling herself—or at least, she’s selling access to Anna, something formerly only available to the cosmopolitan elites. She explains: after being asked time and time again to embark on a host of ‘projects,’ Delvey decided to take the storytelling into her own hands—another affordance of this new blend of art and tech. On her decision to go down this route, she explains, “I decided, why go on somebody else’s platform, or give somebody else control of the narrative, when I can create something of my own?” Delvey is also excited about the tech as a value transmission system. “I’m really excited about the Blockchain, and what it could be,” she says. “I think Web3 and everything is kind of like what the Internet used to be in the nineties.”

That a Web3 venture is enabling Delvey’s own reinvention is indicative of the speed at which today’s culture is moving, and the opportunities this affords those wishing to shift gears. Just as the young artists working out of The Factory in sixties and seventies New York were breaking the established molds and codes of the time, so, too, can those attuned to the ample affordances of these new worlds.The extent to which Delvey herself capitalizes remains to be seen, yet her intent to reach beyond the physical and bypass the gatekeepers she previously sauntered right by is clear—a cultivation of her own makeshift collective, a reinvention of the wheel.

Yes, the wheels stay in rotation. Delvey has a book and podcast in the pipeline, and hopes of leading initiatives for criminal justice reform. “I’m excited about them all, obviously,” she echoes, when asked about a personal favorite, “otherwise I wouldn’t be doing them.” And while she may have unending hours for the time being, Delvey doesn’t intend to stay in detention forever. She has her lawyers on the case, and is hoping to be out in NYC “very, very soon,” having recently made strides in dodging deportation by a judge ordering her former embittered attorney to turn over previously withheld paperwork related to the case. On the draw of the Big Apple, Delvey attributes “the vibe and the people.” She made it there once, and plans to do so again: “It weeds out the people who are not really here to stay, you know?” she says. “It weeds out the failures on its own.” Upon release, she’s looking forward to visiting her old haunts, many of which feature “$$$$” on Yelp (would we expect anything less?). Favorites include the Musket Room (“it’s not really well known”), Le Coucou (“I don’t know if they’re still open. I think they are, right?”—they are), and Shuko (“It’s a sushi spot”). Sweetgreen also got an honorable mention. Better-versed than most in the fluctuations of success, Delvey adds flippantly, “Cute spots, they come and go.”

Anna Delvey. “Not Guilty” (2022). Corrections Facility Pen And Pencil On Smuggled Watercolor Paper. 9” X 12”.

With NYC decidedly in her crosshairs, Delvey illumines that gauzy zone between youth and adulthood, wherein contradictions and incongruities manifest and thrive, a paradoxical enmeshment of defiance and desire—disregard for that which is ‘accepted’, while juggling the ambition to be accepted. She rejects the physical in favor of digital ventures, yet is still intent on making her

return to the bustling, concrete garden of NYC. Once a staunch fixture of the Downtown scene, Delvey is no longer compelled towards the in-crowd, nor is she seeking to establish her own—at least not in the same sense. She longs to depart from the actions of her past, yet her art evokes those very events. It’s in this unique space that Delvey is seemingly unbothered by the media’s intent to feast on her story. Her caring less about her public image is, perhaps, a sign of maturity; an overcoming of that youthful yearning to be liked. Yet, paradoxically, a streak of youthful nonchalance also feeds into this rejection—a self-assured insistence on not caring, anchored by a lack of audible remorse.

The latter visibly and palpably angers certain observers. An anger almost akin to a personal vendetta—bolstered, perhaps, by the closeness with which viewers were able to follow Delvey’s trial and its media storm—as opposed to that leveled at a young woman who has undoubtedly committed wrongdoings, but who arguably has, in the same vein, paid her restitution. Yes, fraud happens everywhere, everyday... and yet so many instances fail to draw anything near to this much attention. Is it that Delvey has fans? Was it her piercing of otherwise insular social circles, the likes of which—with or without Anna Delvey— still command covetous obsession? Is it the promulgation of her fame? That people, despite their forked tongues on the matter, can’t look away? Or is it that edgy defiance—that uniquely youthful stroke of disregard that has forever unnerved its recipients?

Though her escapades may not simply be filed under youthful naiveté, they were, at the end of the day, a first offense. One which has garnered an onslaught of attention and jeering commentary— often peddling moralism while simultaneously profiting off her story. Thus, begs the question: is exiting youth about second chances, or shall we forever be contained to the narratives cast about us? For Delvey, she’s not sure what it is she wants to be remembered for just yet. She does know what she doesn’t want to be known for—and that’s her crimes. She wants something good to come out of her story; she hopes to create a worthy touchstone. “I like to think my story is still being written,” she says with a hint of hopefulness. And now, she’s the one with the pen, with the blueprints for the narrative. But this doesn’t equate this to telling viewers what to think; she wants her work to “sit and marinate a bit.” To Delvey, each of her artworks has a different meaning—individual stories she might one day share. “But, you know,” she says in conclusion, “Andy Warhol never explained any of his work.” So why should Anna?